125. Chocolate

            Chocolate is one of those foods that is hard to imagine living without. I have only known of three people who did not like chocolate and the very idea of it seemed completely bizarre to me, a person who loves chocolate. I may not be a huge fan of the traditional American Hershey bar but I love a Hershey’s Special Dark. And if you take that traditional Hershey bar and add some peanuts, thus making a Mr. Goodbar, I am completely satisfied.

            I love chocolate sprinkled in my morning oatmeal. I love the thick mole that is brim full of chocolate baked into a chicken. I love chocolate in my coffee as a mocha. Blueberry fondant, caramel, mint, almost any sweet indulgence is best coated in a nice thick layer of chocolate. And we Americans love our cookies, but the best are obviously chocolate chip. I’m not a big fan of cake, but if you make it chocolate with more chocolate for the icing I won’t be able to refuse it.

            I know chocolate isn’t really just an American thing. I know that the cacao bean comes from the more southern climes of the Americas. But I also know that we Americans have perfected the use of that wonderful cacao bean. How bland life must have been to Europeans before the discovery of the Americas, before the discovery of chocolate. It is nearly unimaginable to me.

            I can’t spout a litany of the history of chocolate in America here because I don’t know it. I suppose it is something I should research but at this point I am perfectly satisfied to know chocolate is here, to know that my cardiologist says chocolate is good for my heart, to know that there is chocolate.

            There are many things in America that I love. So many of those things create strong opinions amongst my countrymen. But the purpose of my writing anything in this blog for this time is to focus on what unites us, the ties that bind Americans together. I can’t say that the fabric of our lives is knit together by chocolate, but I can say that much of the harshness of some of that courser fabric is made significantly softer by chocolate. I say yes to chocolate.